Charging for evening/weekend campus parking only causes harm

Starting September 1, 2012, parking on central campus will no longer be free during evenings and weekends. New evening permits $40 (garage specific) or $125 (campus surface lots) will be required. Please see Transportation Services’ evening permit policy at: http://transportation.wisc.edu/files/Evening%20Permit%20Policy.pdf

FYI. “Evening Permit Policy” was removed from Transportation Services’ website. Instead, a new “Night Permit Policy” was created. The content as well as the date of approval remain the same except EVENING was replaced with NIGHT, see http://transportation.wisc.edu/files/NightPermitPolicy.pdf

Free parking during evenings and weekends provides the whole community with flexibility and a sense of welcome. Everybody, including base lot permit holders, will experience inconvenience and frustration once the new policy becomes effective. Worse than that, many of us who are not aware of the new policy will be ticketed when parking in the lots that used to be free.
 
If you are a graduate student, faculty or staff member who works late receiving no pay, you will have to pay for parking.
 
If you are a current base-lot permit holder who wants to use alternative lots during evenings and weekends, particularly in winter time, you will have to pay for parking.
 
If you are a visitor to campus, please bring lots of change to feed the meters. You will also need an alarm clock to avoid overtime parking; otherwise, unwanted tickets will cost you more than an evening permit. Worse than that, you might not be able to find a meter to feed, since space for metered parking is limited.
 
If you are a student or visitor who does not have a car, it seems you might be free from these worriers. Nevertheless, once this policy is enacted, it will scare numerous people away from campus for sure. To avoid the tickets and trouble in finding a parking space nearby, less and less people will be comfortable about coming to campus in the evening and during weekends. Without people, the whole campus, as well as all the activities, will lose its vibration, richness, and diversity.
 
The new policy is drafted to close the gap of a large structural deficit according to Transportation Services. Nevertheless, the implementation of this policy is costly. The extra expenses include but are not limited to the following: payroll on hiring more parking patrol officers and more office staff; extra budgets on installation and maintenance of barrier gates, meters and other equipments, etc.. As a result, the structural deficit gap may increase instead.
 
Our university, including parking facilities, belongs to the public. Most parking lots are empty during nights and weekends. Why not open to the public? From an economic standpoint, when it is people-friendly environment, it will attract more people to the campus and that will bring more business, income, diversity and vibration. From a moral standpoint, this is what a public university can provide for the society that supports it with tax dollars.
 
The new policy causes inconvenience to the whole community, creates man-made obstacles to our open campus, ruins the liberty and openness of our university, and gives our school a spirit of unwelcome.
 
Please broadcast the news and avoid parking fines. To stop this detrimental policy, please sign the petition and contact whoever might be able to help to make a change. Thank you very much.